Hillary Clinton: ‘Liberating’ to speak my mind

Hillary Clinton said Friday that she’s “totally done” curbing her speech for political reasons and finds her new perspective “liberating,” following a week of bruising headlines over missteps in her first round of interviews to promote her new book.

Clinton made the remarks Friday evening at the George Washington University Lisner Auditorium, where she was greeted by friendly fire in an interview conducted by her longtime aide and speechwriter, Lissa Muscatine, as part of the promotion for her State Department memoir “Hard Choices.”

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At the beginning of the event, Muscatine quickly raised that Clinton, who has long been derided as overly cautious and politically calculating, had had “some tough interviews,” but that she seemed “free to speak your mind.”

“I think that’s true from some of the reactions I’ve had the last few days,” Clinton said, to laughter from the crowd of roughly 1,500 people.

Clinton was slammed for a clumsy response when ABC News’ Diane Sawyer asked her to defend the high-paying speeches she and former President Bill Clinton have given since leaving the White House, which have earned them millions. Clinton said that she and her husband were “dead broke” when they left the White House, and that they “struggled” to put together resources for “mortgages for houses” and for their daughter Chelsea’s education.

Clinton clarified the remark over the next two days. Three days after that interview aired, Clinton made headlines again after she got into a tense back-and-forth with NPR radio host Terry Gross over why she changed her position on gay marriage to support such unions.

“I say in the book that maybe it’s just the wonderful wealth of experience that I now have,” Clinton told Muscatine. “Maybe it’s because I am totally done with, you know, being really careful about what to say because somebody might think this instead of that. It just gets too exhausting and frustrating and it just seemed a whole lot easier to just put it out there and [I] hope people get used to it — whether you agree with it or not you know exactly where I come from, what I think, what I feel.”

Clinton, who has been trying to position herself as a post-partisan figure who can rise above the fray, added, “I really believe that’s missing in our, both our government dialogue …. and certainly in our political dialogue. There are so many big issues and I talk about some of them both internationally and nationally, and I don’t think we gain by either shouting matches or finger-pointing or biting one’s tongue. I think we really need to have a very open straightforward conversation.”

She added, “Maybe I’m trying to model that, I don’t know, but that’s how it feels to me, and it feels a little bit liberating, to be honest.”

Clinton hinted that her advisers haven’t always favored that, saying, “There are occasions when, I think, people gulp a little — including myself, to be fair.”

Later in the interview, Clinton told a lengthy story that’s also in the book involving New York Times White House reporter Mark Landler, in which he gamely brought drinks to her and an ambassador she was meeting with in Lima after she’d already been imbibing with the traveling press corp. She took time out to praise the “great press corp in the State Department.” Clinton, who has had an often-contentious relationship with a political press corp she views as flimsy, praised the “substantive” questions the State Department reporters would ask.

Toward the end, Muscatine asked Clinton a question from the audience about what her legacy will be.

“I don’t think about a legacy, I think about my life, because I’ve had quite an unpredictable life,” she said, adding that she would continue to be involved in issues she cares about “through my work at the Clinton Foundation and in other ways …”

The crowd cut her off with applause, seeing the comment as an allusion to a 2016 presidential campaign.

Clinton lingered for several minutes after the event, shaking hands with and getting kisses on the cheek from some attendees. At one point, she hoisted a baby out of the crowd and held it onstage with her, surrounded by four members of a security detail. Her coterie of press aides were lined up nearby against a wall in the auditorium.

Outside, people waited for a chance to see Clinton. “Run for president!” someone called out from the crowd comprised mostly of students. She waved, then got in a waiting SUV and drove off.